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“Of course,” I say, because even if I wasn’t planning on leaving, I would now because I don’t want to hear about how I can come see him if I want to “talk,” or worse, hear how Tess is “missed.” As if I don’t know that already.

As if I could ever forget.

“How’s Tess?” he calls out as I’m getting on my bike. “Everyone misses her, you know.”

See?

“I know,” I say, and head to the ferry.

I don’t get nervous—okay, I don’t get really nervous—until I’m off the ferry and in Milford and have biked by the hospital. Saint Andrew’s is close by, just a few orderly, overly manicured streets away, but I haven’t been anywhere in Milford in ages. Not since—well, not since I came over here to visit Tess back when she was working at Organic Gourmet.

Back when I wanted—hoped—to see Jack. Even if he was watching Tess.

I turn onto the road that leads to Saint Andrew’s. It isn’t a long one, as the school starts almost right away, its old and clearly expensively kept brick buildings dotted all over the impossibly green lawn. I turn onto a narrow road, following a neatly lettered sign that says PARKING.

There’s a bike rack at the far end of the parking lot, forlorn and rusty, and I leave my bike there, wondering if it’s stupid to lock it up. I mean, in Ferrisville, or maybe even at the hospital, someone might want to take it, but here? Here my bike looks even worse than the bike rack.

“Hey,” I hear, and look over, see Eli.

“Hey,” I say. He’d told me he’d meet me in the parking lot yesterday, but my heart’s kick-thudding inside my chest anyway, like I’m surprised.

Or happy.

“I wasn’t sure—I thought maybe you wouldn’t come,” he says, and how can someone who looks like him sound unsure? How?

“I’m here,” I say, trying—and failing—not to stare.

I can’t help it, though. Eli looks like an idealized private-school guy, like a model dressed up in clothes for a brochure, a vision of what guys are supposed to look like but never do.

Standing there looking at him, the sunlight shining onto him and highlighting his hair, his eyes, his face, all of him—I have no idea why he wants me here. I know what the sunlight shows as it shines on me. I am too short, I am scrawny, I am as far from perfect as you can get.

“You ready to go?” he says, and I notice his hands are clenching and unclenching by his sides, fingers flexing like butterfly wings.

He isn’t perfect either, and I understand that. I know how it feels.

I put one hand on his arm. “Are you all right?”

It’s the first time I’ve asked anyone other than Tess or my parents or Claire if they’re okay in forever, and it staggers me.

But I have to ask. I want to make sure Eli is okay. I … I care about him.

“Just the usual,” he says. “I’m glad—I’m really glad you came.”

My heart kick-thuds in my chest again and I know all the feelings I had on the way here weren’t nerves. It was never nerves. It was excitement. Hope.

It’s him.

I let my hand linger on his arm, feel the warmth of his skin through his shirt, and say, “Me too.”

We walk toward what he tells me is the cafeteria. It looks just like all the other fancy, old brick buildings, except there are slightly more windows, as well as tables and chairs outside, and as we head in, I glance at him.

Now that I’ve gone and done it—touched him (even if it was only on his sleeve) and admitted to myself that I’m glad to be here, that I want to be here—I can admit something else too.

The “deal” I struck with him, the one that was about Tess—it hasn’t been about her for a while. I still want her to wake up, but I don’t want her to fall for him. I don’t want him to fall for her.

I want him to fall for me.

It’s weird, but after being so careful for so long, after forcing myself to remember the pain of finally seeing that Jack didn’t love me and wasn’t ever going to, I’m not scared of how I feel.

I thought I would be, but the truth is I feel like—I feel like I did during those few heady weeks with Jack, when the world seemed like it had a place for me, not as Tess’s sister, but as just me, in it.